Those scientists just can’t keep their hands out of the cookie jar, can they? Researches at the University of Iowa’s College of Medicine have discovered a hormone that increases trust:
That’s the remarkable finding of a new study in which people who inhaled a brain chemical called oxytocin became more trusting, allowing a partner to invest more simulated money than people who didn’t get the hormone.
It could be a surreal fantasy come true for con men or politicians, though for now neuroscientists are the ones most excited about the report by Swiss and American researchers, to be published today in the journal Nature.
If you read further into the article, the head of neurology makes this worrying half-joke: “One has visions of political operatives spraying it at rallies.” Heh, heh. Great, in a decade the world’s going to morph into some vast Iowan empire.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
It’s not any old hormone, it’s oxytocin. Millions of preggo women have labour induced with oxytocin. (Pitocin is the brand name.) I imagine the head of neurology was making a bit of a joke.
This stuff’s been around for awhile, and I really doubt anyone’ll spray anyone with it without *someone* noticing they’re being manipulated.
Oxytocin is released in labour, by breastfeeding women, and post-orgasm.
If you just go with the afterglow feeling, it’s great good fun: but I imagine that should you start feeling that afterglow for no particular reason, you might get a mite suspicious. (Okay, if you were drunk or on E you wouldn’t.)
Also, women’s uteruses contract. A la orgasm. Some may not notice or perhaps the dosage would be too low. But women are notorious to responding uniquely to hormones.
Did they use pregnant and lactating women in the study? I sort of doubt it: there might actually be a danger of premature labour if other factors were also ripe.